KA: Can you give me an example of what you mean by secret life? What was the public persona versus…was it what you were feeling inside, or what you were doing?
SM: Okay. No. It was… I was a high achiever. I wanted to succeed in everything, and I'm not sure what was the motivation for that. My parents really didn't pressure me into that, but being the only child of school teachers…maybe there was some, I don't know. But regardless, I wanted to be at the top of my class. I wanted to be…if I did athletics, I wanted to be the best. I mean, I was very motivated, and I always felt that that person who was doing all that, if anybody knew that deep down, that I liked little girls and that I wasn't really interested in boys, and pretended to be…
You know I dated in high school, college. I've dated guys. That was ridiculous. But it was important to keep the secret life, the secret. Yeah. I mean, it impacted everything. I started reading about—when I was a child obviously I couldn't really understand the totality of my feelings about girls, but then when I got to where I could read and went to high school and all, then I started reading stuff about being a homosexual. What does that mean, really, being a lesbian?
KA: What kind of stuff did you find?
SM: Well I found the kind of stuff that I mentioned, that it was illegal, that it was an illness, that it was…you were somehow wrong. Not just from an ethical, moral standpoint, but you were just wrong in general. There was something off. You just weren't quite there. And so, contrast that with the overachiever over here who was busy, busy, busy making top grades and all that, with the fear that over here, "Oh my god. They're going to find out and then they're going to want to do something horrible." And that was the literature. I mean that was the literature of the '50s. And even the '60s, was that this was an illness, a sickness, a sin. I mean, it was awful. That was how you were. That was you.
KA: Was there anything positive? Did you ever find anything that was positive?
SM: Well, the seminal event that changed my life, I will tell you this. There was—of course what would I study when I went to the University of Texas in 1964? Abnormal psychology, because that was what I was really interested in. It wasn't a major. I majored in accounting because the successful person had to make a lot of money, okay? But the secret person over here had an elective in abnormal psychology.
I mean, you have to know that back then—I don't know what they do now—but back then at the University of Texas, the lecture halls, there were 500 students in a class. I mean, we'd sit in these huge auditoriums. There were more students in my classes than lived in my entire town of Richards. You know what I mean?
I mean, counting dogs and chickens, and everybody. So I had this professor in that abnormal psychology class, and he had a different lecture every time, obviously. But one day he said, "Well, today we're going to talk about homosexuality." Well I thought, "Finally, I mean this is why I took this class, and now he's going to get to it." And so, his name was Dr. Holmes, and he was a young guy. I remember he had a crew cut, and nice-looking guy. But anyway. He was walking around, and he was talking to us, and he said, "One thing I do, other than teach, is I'm a counselor. I'm a psychologist. I have patients. Clients." And so he said, "I have a question for the class today. What do I say to the happy homosexual?" That changed my life. Because the idea that there could be a happy homosexual was contrary to everything that I had ever felt, ever thought, ever read.
And there's a man standing up there saying, "Homosexuals can be happy." So it changed my vision and my life because then I could see the potential. It opened up a whole new…it still didn't change me from being a secret. I wasn't going to tell anybody I was a homosexual yet. I was still very closeted. But it changed the horizon, I guess, that I had for my life. Yeah. So that was the positive thing that turned my life in a different direction.
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On June 21, 2021 I was interviewed by Katherine Allen (KA) for the LGBTQ Columbia History Initiative, led by Historic Columbia that was documenting "the often unseen and untold stories of this diverse community through a comprehensive resource of oral histories, archival collections and historic site interpretation." The entire interview can be found here:
https://digital.library.sc.edu/exhibits/LGBTQ-Columbia/interviews/sheila-morris/
Sheila Morris was born in Navasota, Texas in 1946, and grew up in the small town of Richards. Her parents were educators. Interview includes discussion of Sheila's childhood, how religion and psychology impacted her perspectives on homosexuality as she grew up, her experiences at the University of Texas, discrimination she encountered as a woman in the accounting profession, her life in Seattle, Washington, and her move to Columbia in the early 1970s. Morris reflected on her relationships with closeted and out women, shared memories of the gay bars in Columbia in the 1970s and 1980s, and discussed her role in cofounding the South Carolina Gay and Lesbian Business Guild in the early 1990s. Morris was also a member of a number of other organizations in Columbia including Palmetto AIDS Life Support Services, the National Organization for Women, Women on Boards and Commissions, and Planned Parenthood. During the interview, Morris read excerpts from her memoir Deep in the Heart and discussed the publication of Southern Perspectives on the Queer Movement: Committed to Home, a collection of essays.
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